[Movie Review] House of Flying Daggers

I watched this earlier today, thinking it may well be a lot like the last yimou movie... Hero...

preconceptions can be mis-leading...

this movie has elements of Hero (ie love, honor) and elements of Zatoichi (the screenplay and the cloak/dagger [no pun intended] world of the main characters)

it will likely be underwhelming/confusing to those who are not into chinese history or enjoy watching movies like Hero and Crouching tiger and the like...

for what its worth... crouching tiger here in the states was the one that opened the door to other movies... iron monkey (or whatever it was) slammed the door shut with a shambolic storyline and poorly versed/acted out action sequences...

unfortunately for Hero and Flying daggers, few people in america have watched either Yimou movies (and others he has directed/written over the years)

this is a gross injustice IMO...

if you have an opportunity to watch House of Flying daggers, please do so with an open mind and absorb the beauty of the landscapes and the interplay between the characters... it is not so subtly nuanced as to shock you, but enough so as to at least plant a seed of doubt in your mind about the intentions of the characters...

zhang ziyi makes yet another appearance in this movie but her role, large though it is, is clearly over-shadowed by her male counter-parts...

Andy Lau in my book stole the show as the army captain, and Takeshi Kaneshiro, zhang's (supposed, you'll know what I mean when you watch the movie ) love interest has some brilliant moments...

the movie is extremely emotional, much like Hero really tugging at your heart-strings in the latter 3rd as everything comes together in a gently increasing tempo...

once again Yimou uses the beuatiful landscapes and exaggerated colors to provide a stunning backdrop to the action and the drama... and much like in Hero... he uses the same colors to convey different moods for the scene...

I highly recommend this movie (as I did Hero) to everyone, but especially those who don't like crappy formula movies which are either chick flicks or action movies...

not everyone will like the premise or the unfolding events, but I thoroughly enjoyed my entire experience...

Hero was good, though only 1 theater here in Albuq was showing it. It was part of a major chain (United Artists), but out of the 10 or 12 United Artist theaters here in Albuquerque, only one showed it...and it was one of the smaller ones in more of a remote location. Even having lived here 7.5 years now, I had to search for directions online to find my way to this one...

I think one of the major reasons these, or many foreign films don't tend to see many viewers in the US has to do with the movies being sub-titled. I know some friends who do object to subs, and one I know in particular, he has watched some Anime series before. However, when I mentioned that Anime Network on demand had been added to Comcast's lineup he wanted to know if it was subbed or not. Only when I assured him all the shows there aren't subbed was he interested in checking it out.

It really comes down to being able to follow what's going on, when one's reading subs which flash off a screen fast...as some languages are naturally spoken faster then English is, while following what's going on as the scenes change as well. Concentration one puts on reading the words, takes away from concentrating on the rest...

One does get used to it, and it does become easier to follow over time. (I used to have to pause anything subbed on my DVD player every line mostly to catch everythign that was going on). Now, things have gotten much easier (though wrt Japanese I started taking Japanese in college so it might be as fair a comparison for people who can't follow anything in a foreign language at all), and there are some things, do to extremely poor dubbing (from companies with rather notorious reputations in this regard) I tend to watch subbed. Some things (such as if everyone starts speaking at once) can still be a bit harder to follow still... However this said, I can also understand why many Americans can tend to feel a bit lost. I think this sense of being lost, can have just as much to do with it, as whether people like something or not.

Awesome film, had it on DVD for some time now. Simply stunning, brilliant. Loved the story, acting fighting etc. Great emotional value and on and on

IMO better than Hero, which for me looked great but lacked some of the heart that House of Flying Daggers has.

BTW Hero was no1 in the US box office so the whole "foreign films won't do well in the US" doesn't hold anymore. If you make a good film people will want to see it (probably didn't hurt to have Tarantino's name plastered all over it, uck)